Expanding a comment I made in the other thread, take a look at the Wikipedia list of reported UFO sighthings. One thing that I immediately note scrolling this list is that the overwhelming majority of reports after 1950 are from the US. The last time aliens were sighted in Italy was 1978. In France, 1981. In Spain, 1979. Germany does not appear on the list at all. On the other hand, there are 42 entries for the US and the list is not even updated.
My priors on “UFO sighthings are a culture-bound illness of the US” are significantly higher than “Not only there are aliens but they are mostly ignoring everything outside America”.
I also noticed that there is an inverse cultural relationship between the belief in magic, witchcraft, spirits/fair folk etc and the belief in UFOs. Which makes me think aliens simply fill the Post-Enlightment gap in the legendarium for cultures that want to pretend they are “too reasonable” to believe in magic, but open to a belief in “sci fi” myths; ie: Fair Folk kidnapping folk—nah, Aliens kidnapping folk—yah.
I can assure you that list is US centric. There are plenty of reported sightings in all of Europe in the last 30 years. The 90s especially and there are several ‘mass sightings’ that I’ve read about in Portugal that are simply not in that list. There is a clear lack of centralized information about all the world ufo reports, even if their explanation is prozaic.
Expanding a comment I made in the other thread, take a look at the Wikipedia list of reported UFO sighthings. One thing that I immediately note scrolling this list is that the overwhelming majority of reports after 1950 are from the US. The last time aliens were sighted in Italy was 1978. In France, 1981. In Spain, 1979. Germany does not appear on the list at all. On the other hand, there are 42 entries for the US and the list is not even updated.
My priors on “UFO sighthings are a culture-bound illness of the US” are significantly higher than “Not only there are aliens but they are mostly ignoring everything outside America”.
I also noticed that there is an inverse cultural relationship between the belief in magic, witchcraft, spirits/fair folk etc and the belief in UFOs. Which makes me think aliens simply fill the Post-Enlightment gap in the legendarium for cultures that want to pretend they are “too reasonable” to believe in magic, but open to a belief in “sci fi” myths; ie: Fair Folk kidnapping folk—nah, Aliens kidnapping folk—yah.
I can assure you that list is US centric. There are plenty of reported sightings in all of Europe in the last 30 years.
The 90s especially and there are several ‘mass sightings’ that I’ve read about in Portugal that are simply not in that list.
There is a clear lack of centralized information about all the world ufo reports, even if their explanation is prozaic.